On-site blogger Michael Totten’s recent piece concerning his visit to Ramadi — capital of Anbar Province in Iraq and formerly capital of Al Qaeda’s self-declared “Islamic State of Iraq” — describes the great convulsion that occurred earlier this year in that city which finally turned the people of that locale and region firmly against Al Qaeda in Iraq:

“Al Qaeda said they would mess him up if he got in their way.
He called their bluff and they seriously fucked him up.
They launched a massive attack on his area.
All hell broke loose.
They set houses on fire.
They dragged people through the streets behind pickup trucks.
A kid from his area went into town and Al Qaeda kidnapped him, tortured him, and delivered his head to the outpost in a box.
The dead kid was only sixteen years old.”
[…]

“One night,” Lieutenant Markham said, “after several young people were beheaded by Al Qaeda, the mosques in the city went crazy.
The imams screamed jihad from the loudspeakers.
We went to the roof of the outpost and braced for a major assault.
Our interpreter joined us.
Hold on, he said.
They aren’t screaming jihad against us.
They are screaming jihad against the insurgents.”

“A massive anti-Al Qaeda convulsion ripped through the city,” said Captain McGee.
“The locals rose up and began killing the terrorists on their own.
They reached the tipping point where they just could not take any more.
They told us where the weapon caches were.
They pointed out IEDs under the road.”

“In mid-March,” Lieutenant Hightower said, “a sniper operating out of a house was shooting Americans and Iraqis.
Civilians broke into his house, beat the hell out of him, and turned him over to us.”
[…]

“One day,” Lieutenant Hightower said, “some Al Qaeda guys on a bike showed up and asked where they could plant an IED against Americans.
They asked a random civilian because they just assumed the city was still friendly to them.
They had no idea what was happening.
The random civilian held him at gunpoint and called us to come get him.”

“People here tacitly supported Al Qaeda,” Captain McGee said, “because Al Qaeda was attacking us.
But they took control of the city.
They forced girls to stay home from school.
They dragged people outside the city and shot them in the head.
They broke people’s fingers if they were seen smoking a cigarette.
They forced men to grow beards.
Once they started acting like that they could only establish a safe haven by using terrorism against the local civilians.”

“Al Qaeda struck out three times,” said Major Peters.
“Strike One:
They killed a Sheikh and held his body for four days.
Strike Two:
They executed young people in public.
Strike Three:
They attacked the compound of another sheikh.
The people here said enough.
They aligned with us because they realized Al Qaeda was the real enemy.
They didn’t like Al Qaeda’s version of Islam at all.”

Emblematic of this convulsive wholesale turning away by the people of Ramadi and Anbar Province from Al Qaeda, and their strange new alliance with the United States, Totten presents us with the above affecting drawing by an Iraqi child of Ramadi — an image of the strong arm of America symbolically wielding the Sword of Iraq to slay the evil, multi-headed Hydra of Al Qaeda….

Not a bad image with which to commemorate September 11th, and the immolation alive of 3,000 innocent folk by that same organization of Al Qaeda six years ago.